H. A. and Margret Rey

H.A. and Margret Rey were among the first authors and illustrators to entrust their manuscripts and illustrations to the Collection. In 1966 they sent two original drawings from Curious George, accompanied by an illustrated letter from H.A. to Lena de Grummond. That illustration, showing George carrying his pictures and books to Hattiesburg, was chosen for the cover of our award-winning catalog for the Curious George Comes to Hattiesburg: The Life and Work of H. A. and Margret Rey exhibit which ran from September 1999 - April, 2000. Gifts continued over the next twenty years, when upon Margret's death, their entire literary archive was willed to the de Grummond Collection.

Recently, the Collection received an additional $50,000 gift from the H. A. and Margret Rey estate to provide support for scholary work, research and preservation. The Rey Collection contains complete sets of original drawings and color separations for six Curious George titles and sketches for a seventh. Dummies, color separations, and full color illustrations are held for a number of other picture books including Tit for Tat, Billy's Picture, Anybody at Home?, Elizabite, See the Circus, Katy-No-Pocket, and Zebrology. An interesting component of the holdings are dummies and preliminary sketches for several unpublished works including "Nonsense ABC," "La Rue: Decoupages a Colorer," and "O Vegetariano Convertido."

An illustrated manuscript for Whiteblack the Penguin Sees the World (Houghton Mifflin, 2000) was included in one of their early contributions. In October 1999, it was "rediscovered" by Anita Silvey, editor and publisher of the Rey's works at Houghton Mifflin when she visited Hattiesburg.

The Rey Collection has been processed as part of the de Grummond Collection's third National Endowment for the Humanities grant for 2001-2003. To see their Finding Aid click here.